family problems

As her irritating family prepares to celebrate her grandfather's eightieth birthday, sixteen-year-old Lily yearns for just one whole perfect day together.

In a small Alabama town, high school seniors Asa and Ezmita, both with troubled families and dreams of leaving home to attend college, find comfort in their blossoming friendship.

Future interior designer Maggie, a sixth-grader, focuses on an upcoming design contest to cope with friendship and family troubles, including having Tony, a half-brother she never knew existed, move in.

"A mixed-heritage dancer's coming of age within the African diaspora is shaped by abuse at the hands of a cousin, her mother's descent into addiction, and her father's efforts to create a Nigerian-inspired home in America"--Provided by publisher.

"Underprivileged and keenly self-aware, SoCal fourteen-year-old Layla Bailey isn't used to being noticed. Except by mean girls who tweet about her ragged appearance. All she wants to do is indulge in her love of science, protect her vulnerable younger brother, and steer clear of her unstable mother. Then a school competition calls for a biome. Layla chooses her own home, a hostile ecosystem of indoor fungi and secret shame. With a borrowed video camera, she captures it all. The mushrooms growing in her brother's dresser. The black mold blooming up the apartment walls. The unmentionable things living in the dead fridge. All the inevitable exotic toxins that are Layla's life. Then the video goes viral. When Child Protective Services comes to call, Layla loses her family and her home. Defiant, she must face her bullies and friends alike, on her own. Unafraid at last of being seen, Layla accepts the mortifying reality of visibility. Now she has to figure out how to stay whole and stand behind the truth she has shown the world"--OCLC.

Sixteen-year-old Leo Coughlin's life is increasingly stressful because his autistic older brother Caleb's behavior is becoming more bizarre and even violent, and their parents' marriage is falling apart--but Leo finds an escape in long distance running, and in two new friends: Curtis, himself a potential state champion who teaches him the strategy of running, and Mary, his would-be girlfriend.

In Punjab, 1929, the young bride Mehar does not even know who her new husband is, having been sequestered in the family "china room" with the other two women forced to marry three brothers. They are only allowed out at night when Mai, their controlling mother-in-law, summons them to a dark room at night. Mehar, strong-willed, vows to uncover what Mai doesn't want her to know about her new husband. Many decades later in 1999, a young man arrives at his uncle's Punjab house, hoping to find help overcoming an addiction and a history of racism and violence in England, all having to do with the secret that Mehar found out nearly a century earlier.

While both deal with problems at home, one-time best friends Jill and Max, seventeen, kiss, and while Jill knows that was a mistake, she struggles not to kiss him again.

"While thirteen-year-old Teddy fights for his life after a football injury at training camp, his friends and family gather to support him and discuss events leading to his coma. Told through dialogue, text messages, newspaper articles, transcripts, an online forum, and Teddy's inner thoughts"--OCLC.

"The other orphans say Margot is lucky. Lucky to survive the horrible accident that killed her family. Lucky to have her own room because she wakes up screaming every night. And finally, lucky to be chosen by a prestigious family to live at their remote country estate. But it wasn't luck that made the Suttons rescue Margot from her bleak existence at the group home. Margot was handpicked to be a companion to their silent, mysterious daughter, Agatha. At first, helping with Agatha--and getting to know her handsome older brother--seems much better than the group home. But soon, the isolated, gothic house begins playing tricks on Margot's mind, making her question everything she believes about the Suttons . . . and herself. Margot's bad dreams may have stopped when she came to live with Agatha--but the real nightmare has just begun"--Provided by publisher.